(GIF ISN'T MINE, CREDITS TO THE OWNER)
~~~
"I didn't hire you simply to get us across the Fold." Kaz spoke to the man that was sitting in front of him. Inej, Jesper, Sabo, Arken, and Kaz were sitting in a carriage towards Novokribirsk, West Ravka.
Even though Arken was hired on a job after Sabo tried to kill him, he wasn't in a bad mood. He looked like he had found a new purpose. Sabo didn't know what to think of it.
"You're with us because you smuggle Grisha out of the Little Palace and that's the location of our target." Kaz continued before Inej interrupted him.
"Sun Summoner."
"Alleged." Kaz replied irritated. Jesper shared a look with Sabo, trying not to laugh at his friends in front of Arken.
"They wouldn't keep a fraud in the most secure location in all of Ravka." Inej grumbled. Kaz ignored her as he looked back towards Arken.
"You said you have a contact who can get us inside, a Heartrender." He asked. Arken nodded at him. "How do I know that we can trust her?"
"Nina grew up there." Arken explained, still holding his bag.
"Most Grisha grew up in the Little Palace." Kaz stated, looking through the window of the vehicle. They were almost at their destination. "Very few would betray their general and fewer still would help foreigners kidnap their most prized possession."
"Nina's a radical." Arken insisted. "She thinks Grisha should get to choose if they serve the Crown. She despises involuntary service more than she does Fjerdans."
Sabo shifted in her seat. "I like her already." Inej grinned at her.
"Talking about staying at a hotel for the night-" Jesper tried.
"Nobody was talking about that." Kaz interrupted him.
But Jesper continued, pretending not to hear Kaz. "-I wouldn't mind spending a night in Novokribirsk."
"Where is she staying?" Kaz demanded, looking back towards Arken.
"We're almost there."
-
The crew stepped out of the small carriage. They were in front of a building that served as an inn. The walls had cracks in them, rubble lying beneath it.
"This is nice." Jesper noted, looking at the hotel in front of them.
"Wouldn't mind staying here while we're on a job." Sabo replied. Kaz shot both of them a look as he walked inside.
When they entered the inn the man behind the counter didn't look up at them, too busy counting his kruge.
Sabo took another glance at the money. It wasn't kruge. It was krydda. The currency used in Fjerda.
Something was wrong.
Kaz looked from the krydda to Sabo who was standing next to him, sensing that she had noticed it too. Sabo ignored his look as she started scanning the inside of the inn. She observed the room, searching for threats. She could feel her body tense up.
Kaz noticed her body language change and started looking around too, wondering if she had seen something. Sabo concentrated as she looked up the stairs, hoping to hear someone before they got attacked.
Jesper looked at his friends, not understanding what was going on. He walked up behind Sabo and tapped her on her shoulder.
"What are we looking for?"
She frowned at him. "I-"
"The conductor?" The innkeeper asked, interrupting them.
Jesper and Sabo turned around towards the innkeeper, who was looking at Arken.
Arken looked surprised but nodded at the man.
"Room 2.06."
They walked up the stairs, searching for the room number. The room was at the back of the second floor. Sabo walked towards it, the crew behind her. She inhaled as she saw that the door was already open. Sabo turned around and nodded towards the room, warning them to be on guard.
The icy weather had made its way inside through the balcony door that was still open. The cold air hitting them.
"She knew to expect us." Arken said as he walked in behind the crew.
In the room was a small bed, a suitcase lying on top of it, which was covered in glass shards.
"She isn't late. She's gone." Kaz stated, annoyed.
On the nightstand stood a plate with a half-eaten stroopwafel on it. Jesper walked towards the plate, picking the delicacy up and taking a small bite from it.
"Yes, but her things are all-" Arken looked at the sharpshooter. "Scratch that, she is gone. Nina wouldn't eat a half of a stroopwafel."
Sabo took a look into the yellow suitcase. The woman her belongings were lying in it neatly.
Kaz lifted the open lid of the suitcase, which revealed a silver button of a wolf's head.
Sabo tensed.
"What is it?" Jesper asked. Sabo reached towards the button, turning it over in her hand.
"Drüskelle." She said before swallowing. "Grisha hunters."
Jesper and her shared a look.
"Explains the Fjerdan krydda the innkeeper was counting when we arrived," Kaz stated. "It's likely he ratted her out."
"Fucking asshole," Sabo muttered as she placed the button in her pocket.
"She's probably captive on a ship to Fjerda by now." Arken gulped.
"They had a clear line of attack," Inej spoke as she stood by the balcony. Kaz turned around to face her. "Take a look, make sure there aren't any more surprises." Inej nodded at him and stepped outside.
"Well, that's that." Arken sighed as he lowered himself on the bed. "We've lost our way into the Little Palace."
--
The group walked outside of the Inn, the reception where the man had been standing half an hour ago, was gone. Sabo shot an annoyed look at the empty chair as she walked outside.
A figure dropped down next to Kaz. Kaz didn't look faced in the slightest as he nodded at Inej.
"All clear." She said. Jesper saluted her.
"This seems like a reasonable juncture to abandon this whole Sun Summoner plan." Arken said as he placed his hands inside of his pockets.
Kaz turned around towards the older man. His eyebrows shooting upwards.
"Abandon?" He asked. Arken shrugged. "We're in this now and I know what a million kruge means to me, what does it mean to you?" Kaz looked towards Inej who was standing next to Jesper.
"Freedom." She declared. Kaz gave her a slight nod as he shifted his gaze towards Jesper.
"Fun. Like, at least a few months." Jesper predicted as he turned towards Sabo. "What about you? A nice weapon maybe?"
Kaz looked at her, wondering what she desired.
Sabo thought about it for a while before she came up with something funny instead of the truth. "A ticket to send Billy back to Fjerda." she smirked. Kaz tried not rolling his eyes.
"A one-way ticket, I presume?" Inej asked. Sabo smirked at her as she nodded. "Maybe I'll even pay the captain to crash the ride halfway through."
Kaz raised his eyebrow at Arken.
"Retirement," he answered.
"Right," Kaz paused before continuing. "So, we press on. You get us across the Fold, and I'll figure out the rest on the other side."
"Fine," Arken said as he placed down his bag, he pulled out a notebook and started to write.
"To cross, I'll need 20 pounds of alabaster coal."
Jesper shot Sabo a look. "Coal?" he mouthed at her before looking back at Arken, who had definitely noticed their exchange.
"A peck of Majdaloun jurda." He continued. "Uh, not the kind from Kerch. It's too weak. And uh." He looked back over at Jesper, his eyes looking him up and down "A goat."
Jesper frowned at the man, not understanding his insinuation.
"He's saying you're the goat," Sabo whispered towards him. Jesper smiled proudly as he looked back at Arken.
"Now, we meet in the dead of night. There's a wreckage of a skiff northeast, on the edge of town." He paused before looking towards Sabo, still not over her putting a knife to his throat. "Sabo will show you the way."
Sabo squinted her eyes at the man, before nodding at him as if nothing happened. Arken ripped out the page of his notebook and gave it to Kaz. Kaz frowned at them, not understanding the look they had shared as he took the paper.
"So, who gets what?" Sabo asked Kaz.
"Inej, jurda." Kaz ordered. "Sabo and I will get the goat, and Jesper." Kaz took a step towards the sharpshooter as he held up the page that Arken was just writing on. "Just the coal, no detours." Jesper grinned at him as he grabbed the note from Kaz his hand.
"Have a little bit of faith in me, boss."
----
Kaz, Inej, Jesper, and Sabo had all taken the carriage towards the local market. They had split up when they stepped out of the carriage. Inej and Jesper headed one side while Kaz and Sabo went the other.
They walked together in silence for a while before Kaz spoke up. "What did Arken mean when he said that you'd show us the way?"
Sabo didn't look at him. "He and I had a little chat about how he helps families fleeing the war."
"He seemed quite angry when he said it," Kaz noted.
"I almost killed him last night, he had every reason to."
Kaz still wasn't satisfied with the answer that he got but he decided he had bigger issues for the day. He stored the thought away for later. Kaz gestured towards a local store.
"Why don't you go in and gather supplies. Your Ravkan is better than mine." He tested her.
Sabo frowned at him as she pointed towards the market. "Weren't we supposed to get the goat?"
"Get us an emergency packet, just in case we need it." Sabo frowned at him before she nodded and walked towards the shop.
Sabo knew for sure that she had seen him packing an emergency packet in his room before they had departed. She started going over every little detail from the past days, wondering why he had sent her to a store to buy things that they didn't need. That was until she walked past a memorial wall. Names of the people that had died in the war were written on it.
She cursed him immediately. How dare he sent her past a memorial wall where her fake dead parents were remembered. He was testing her. Doubting the story that she had been telling for years.
What did she do that made him question her?
She pretended not to see the wall, aware of the eyes that were following her every move.
-
Kaz Brekker didn't trust a lot of people. It was safer to say that he didn't trust any, but the past year he had begun to trust a few. One of them being Sabo.
Even though he didn't know a lot about her, he felt calm around her. Calm and comfortable enough to drop his guard and smile once in a while. But the past few months it became painfully obvious how little he knew about her.
Before he knew Sabo he had Inej shadow her for a while to find out where her loyalty lied. Inej told him a few things.
The first thing was that Sabo was a refugee from the Ravkan war, the second thing was that she was climbing the ranks of the fighting pit, and the last, and best thing was that she beat a few Dime Lion's their asses for disturbing her sleep.
Kaz paid her a visit shortly after. He knew the rumors that were whispered on the streets. A lot of different groups wanted Sabo within their crew.
But Kaz Brekker, (with a little help from Jesper), had convinced her to join his. She had a few conditions, of course. One of them was that she wouldn't be stuck on a contract. He had agreed, knowing that she would've been a good investment, even if she wasn't always there. But what he didn't know was how quickly he had warmed up to her.
He hated the distraction but didn't want to get rid of it either.
When they traveled towards Ravka, Sabo didn't give a kick. Not even affected by going back to her country of origin. Kaz had suspected before that she was lying about her past, almost anyone from the Barrel did, even him, but she had never given him a hint of where she was from. Until this morning when she noticed the krydda. It could be a coincidence but Kaz Brekker didn't believe in coincidences.
Kaz had purchased the goat from one of the local stalls. He wanted to let the goat walk on a leash but there was a crowd gathering around him.
"They want you to believe the Sun Summoner has been found to finally tear down the wall that divides us." A man yelled. Kaz looked around him, seeing the flyers that announced a public speech of Zlatan.
"How many times have we been fed a story like that? And how many times have we in the West been told to send our sons and daughters through the Fold for another year?" Kaz squinted at the man as he watched him.
"It is time to accept that we need to break away from the old county. Now is the time to form our own country to keep what we make and what we earn, instead of sending it to the East." Kaz started moving through the crowd.
"For the true Ravka!" General Zlatan yelled as he raised his fist in the air. Kaz kept his eyes fixed on the general, who stepped off the stage and walked towards an older man.
Kaz recognized Arken immediately. Arken looked at the general with a warm grin. He reached his hand towards the man, who shook it.
Arken had a double agenda.
Kaz scowled as he turned back towards the store he'd send Sabo to.
He walked past the wall when someone caught his eye. Inej was standing before the wall, reading the names in the stone. Inej sensed someone walking towards her, she turned around as Kaz approached her, a goat beneath his arm.
"He's adorable." Inej smiled.
"Don't get attached." Kaz replied. "I didn't think I'd have to specify no detours to you."
"Even if just a few minutes could end a lifetime of questions?"
"Your parents are Suli, they don't cross the Fold they go around."
"I know, I just thought that if I saw their names on there, I could let the idea of them go." Inej looked at him as she pulled out her necklace. "This thing," she said, clutching it. "This was all that I had when I was sold to the Menagerie and if it was worth anything, Heleen would have taken it. But this is just a simple token of faith that my mother stitched. Kaz, this is all that I have left of them. Unless-"
"Hope is dangerous," Kaz warned, breaking their gaze as he saw someone approach. "It clouds your judgment. Pray, scream, do whatever you have to do to push this out of your mind, and move on. We all have debts to pay."
"Saints, you actually got the goat." Sabo said as she stood behind them. Inej turned towards her, her necklace still visible. Sabo her eyes lingered on it for a minute.
It seemed familiair; she was sure of it.
"Of course, I got the goat." Kaz replied. "Do you have the emergency package?"
Sabo nodded at him. "I thought that I saw you putting one in your bag before we left."
Kaz ignored the look Sabo gave him. "I didn't."
Sabo broke their gaze as she shrugged. "Must've been something else then."
"Must've been." Kaz agreed.
"Shall we go to the carriage?" Inej asked, breaking the tension.
They began walking back towards the carriage.
"Ten kruge that Jesper's going to name the goat." Sabo challenged.
----
Kaz, Inej, Sabo, and the goat were walking towards the hidden train. The Fold was next to them. Sabo held a flaming torch as she spotted Arken. They were along the outskirts of Novokribirsk.
Arken nodded at them.
"Can you give me a light, Sabo?"
"What do you mean?" She asked. Arken revealed the unlit torch that he held behind him.
"We could use the extra light." he said flatly. Sabo pushed her lit torch against Arkens, which lit up. Arken started leading them forward.
"We're almost there." He spoke after a while.
"Where the hell is Jesper?" Kaz ranted.
"Just a little further," Arken said, still holding the torch up.
They walked upon an old sign with scuff marks and peeling paint. It held an image of a small explosion blowing off someone's leg. This was new, Sabo thought. She stopped walking, Inej and Kaz stopping behind her.
"Landmines," Inej stressed.
Arken scrolled right past it as if he hadn't seen it. The goat made a noise as if it knew something bad was about to happen.
"We'll wait." Kaz called after Arken. "We'll follow the path that you carve."
Arken frowned at them. "That sign, that was my idea to keep people away. Can't be too careful, we're fine, come." Kaz, Inej, and Sabo shared a look before they walked after the older man, slowly walking in his footsteps. They approached a train track that lead directly into the Fold.
"It's one thing hearing about it." Inej breathed. "But this is-"
"Nothing compared to what lies within." Arken interrupted her. He handed his torch to Sabo, who was now holding both the torches, the heat warming up her face.
Arken placed down his bag and approached the towering wall of dark clouds that made up the Fold, lightning flashed from within it. Kaz raised his eyebrow as Arken reached into the Fold, a train carriage rolled out on the track.
It was weird being this close to the Fold again. The Fold had represented a lot of things to Sabo. Once hell, once her escape.
"So, goat, jurda." He signaled towards the purchases the crew made at the market. "Thank you. Now we're just waiting on..."
Gunshots started ringing in the distance. Inej reached towards her knives, Kaz just rolled his eyes seeing who was running ahead of the group.
Jesper ran towards them, a big group of angry people chasing him.
"They can't see the train." Arken hissed. Sabo tried putting out the torches, stabbing them into the sand below them. However, the fire kept burning. She looked back towards the crowd that was slowly approaching them and cursed under her breath. She placed her hands around the torches and used her powers to put out the light.
Kaz and Arken were still looking at Jesper running towards them, however, Inej noticed. She frowned, thinking she was seeing things as Kaz started yelling at Jesper.
"Jesper, get here now!" He called
"Leave the lantern!" Inej added.
Jesper stopped running as he noticed the board.
"Landmines!" Jesper yelled, carrying a sack over his shoulder. A shot rang behind him, suddenly closer than before. Jesper looked behind him, measuring his chances.
"Okay, wait for me!" he yelled. Arken opened the door to the train. Inej and Kaz stepped into it. Sabo followed them as Arken started lifting the purchases into the train before jumping in after them.
"Don't you go without me! Wait!"
Jesper grabbed Sabo her hand and jumped onto the train with the others. Jesper carried the sack over his shoulder as he walked into the carriage.
"Go, after him!" a voice shouted. The mob who were chasing Jesper, who Sabo could only assume were gamblers, hesitated by the sign. Inej started closing the door, the gunshots still flying towards them.
"Please tell me you have 20 pounds of alabaster coal," Arken asked as bullets started hitting off the train
"Slight snag in the plan." Jesper breathed. "Turns out that the kid who was helping me buy the coal didn't know how to, uh, buy coal."
"To you or in general?" Sabo asked as she sat down on one of the seats attached to the wall.
"In general!" Jesper replied.
"We know you gambled it away." Kaz stormed.
"I lost a little bit of the money." Jesper started. Kaz tilted his head at him.
"Fine. I lost all of the money, but I managed to steal 20 pounds of alabaster coal." Jesper said proudly as he handed the sack at Arken.
Arken his face fell as he held the coal. "No, no, this is 16 pounds."
"Sixteen pounds of alabaster coal." Jesper repeated as he took off his coat.
"Can we do it on 16?" Kaz asked, breaking his gaze from Jesper.
"Never been done before." Arken barked.
"Let's go! We'll follow their footprints!" a voice shouted from outside.
"It's now or never." Sabo bargained. Arken nodded at her as he prepared the train.
He lowered the other benches and grabbed Jesper his shoulders, putting him down onto one of them.
"Sit here. Never shift your weight." Inej sat down at his left, next to where Sabo was sitting. Kaz sat down next to the engine. Arken lifted his sleeve, revealing several scars on his arm. Inej raised her eyebrows.
"You've crossed that many times?" she asked, surer about their journey. The gunshots were still hitting the train.
"It's a numbers game," Arken called. "Cross this often and you get nightmares." he sat down on the last remaining seat and opened the engine. Inej looked at the fire and started to pray.
Sabo laid her head against the wall behind her as she drew in a deep breath. Jesper who was sitting next to her started looking through a viewing slot. A large explosion rang through the air. Jesper could see the explosion through the slot.
"Landmines!" He shouted.
"I thought you said they weren't real!" Kaz fumed at Arken, the light of the fire Arken made reflected on his face.
Arken looked at them innocently. "I said nothing of the sort. I just said I put up the sign myself."
-
The train started moving along the rails, moving them forward into the Fold. It was one of the most silent moments the crew had shared, each of them slowly realizing that they were in the Fold.
Arken held up his watch. A sound rang above them. Making them all look up.
"What was that?" Jesper asked.
"I've erected a system of timers along the line. Bits of metal hung on poles to keep me apprised of our pace."
"How did you know where to put the poles?" Kaz asked the older man.
Arken looked at him for a while before answering. "Physics and engineering account for... most of my success."
Inej raised her eyebrows. "And for the rest?" She asked.
"What we might call divine intervention and what others might call luck." Kaz glared at him, not appreciating his sentence at all.
"And after all, the Fold is thick with volcra and the tracks aren't complete anymore. Coal please." Arken asked quickly.
"I'm sorry." Jesper laughed, frightened. "Did you say the tracks weren't complete?"
How great. The tracks that had once saved her, were going to kill them all.
"I said they aren't complete." Arken corrected, still not looking up from his watch.
Something was wrong.
"What--" Jesper started to speak while he started leaned forward.
"Ah, ah, ah." Arken warned. "No moving." Jesper took a deep breath before slowly sitting back.
"What's wrong?" Sabo asked Arken, noticing the crease in his brow.
"We're a tad late." He answered. "More coal." He ordered Kaz. Kaz shot him a look. If they weren't in the situation they were in, Sabo would've laughed at Kaz his expression.
"Back to the real issue." Jesper stammered. "We're on tracks that don't connect to other tracks?"
"Yes, there's a gap but-"
"You said that you could get us through," Kaz ordered, glaring at the conductor.
"How much of a gap?" Jesper quaked.
"A few years ago, I went on this carriage as any normal ride, but part of the rails were missing. It was probably the volcra nest nearby. But don't worry I built slats on the car. They roll into place under the wheels, the turbine generates enough wind to push us to the eastern track as long as we don't shift our weight."
Inej and Sabo shared a look, preparing for an attack.
"Now, the noise may attract volcra, but it's the only way across." Arken flipped a switch, making the carriage shake. "Now, there's a nest nearby. But we'll be fine. If they haven't attacked us in..."
A roar beamed above them. Arken looked at the crew in front of him.
"Well, now we've got a problem."
Animalic sounds started growling above them, Sabo her heartbeat sped up, she had moved through the fold once before with two of her friends, they both were Grisha and they had made it out by working together. The only Grisha in the carriage were her and Jesper. How were they supposed to protect them all?
Arken was flipping the controls frantically.
"How do we fight them off?" Kaz thundered.
"I outrun them, open the throttle and toss in all the coal which works when there's, you know, 20 pounds of it." He shouted towards Jesper.
A loud growl rumbled above them, a spike on top of the train had impaled a volcra. Blood started dripping down into the carriage right on top of Sabo her head.
Sabo shivered as she moved away, Inej shifted on her seat making room for her. Sabo sat down next to her as Arken looked through a periscope.
"That stupid thing impaled itself on a spike." He yelled.
"We need to get it off. The others will stand on it." Kaz shouted at him.
"More coal!" Arken shouted to Kaz, still looking through the pole.
"We're down to fumes!" Kaz yelled as he tossed the sack that held the coal into the engine.
"We won't make it with this extra weight." Arken gulped. "Give me a second."
"This is how we die?" Jesper cried. Looking at the people in front of him.
"Jesper we're not going to die!" Sabo yelled at him, wiping the warm blood from her face.
"Tell that to your face!" Jesper replied.
"Jesper grab the goat." Arken belted.
"I'm not throwing out the goat!" He called. Inej started praying. Her hands in a prayer, a knife in between them.
"Grab the damn goat, it's not bait. It's for you!" Jesper frowned at him as he grabbed the goat and set it down in his lap. "I need you to calm down. Hug the goat. Shut the hell up!"
Another sound rang above them, indicating they hit another mark.
"We should have hit that 20 seconds ago," Arken mumbled.
"20 Seconds is?" Kaz demanded.
"My timings are precise to get us outside. Even 20 seconds behind means the train stops inside the Fold and that means we die." Sabo drew in a deep breath, preparing for what she was about to do. Arken stood up and looked out of the viewing slot. "There's more coming." He said, preparing them.
Inej took Sabo her hand as Jesper started hugging the goat. "So soft." Sabo could hear the Volcras gathering on the roof, preparing to finish what they had started years ago.
Arken lowered himself into the corner. "You may want to make your peace."
The metal roof above them began to tear and bend.
Sabo was about to stand up but before she could Jesper stood in the middle of the carriage with his eyes closed. Still holding the goat under one arm.
Kaz followed him, not understanding why his friend was standing.
Jesper took a deep breath before he opened his eyes and grabbed his gun. He fired through the roof nailing the volcra right in the face. He swapped to the other pistol and fired through the viewing slot, another direct hit. The volcra fell away, Jesper twirled the gun and returned his gun back into its holster.
Jesper lowered the goat and pushed it towards the girls next to him.
"Hold Milo for me."
Inej and Sabo shared a look. "Milo?" they questioned.
"Are they all dead?" Kaz asked.
A volcra tore open the roof and stuck its head through. Jesper aimed his gun. Blowing off the Volcras head. Jesper holsters the gun as Kaz and Sabo share a look. Kaz shifted his gaze towards Jesper who sat back down. The train had come to a halt. Not moving, but they were still in the Fold.
Sabo slowly placed her hand beneath her back, pushing it on the back of the train. She could feel her powers starting to work as the carriage moved forward.
Kaz frowned and looked back towards the engine, not understanding what was happening, but before he could look at Sabo, beams of light streamed through the holes of the carriage. Sabo discreetly placed her right hand back on the goat.
They were out of the fold.
Kaz looked back at his crew, appreciating that they were all alive.
"Is everyone okay?"